Those trying to protect marriage puzzle me in their oppositon to gay marriage. If they really want to protect it, how about a constitutional amendment prescribing stoning for adultery? Now there’s a threat to marriage.

I have never understood why governments–at any level–concern themselves with marriage between consenting adults. No government has any compelling interest in who I choose to marry. Because this is true, there should be no government benefits for being married. Treat all individuals equally, whether they are married or not.

He’s an idiot. Most troglodytes are. Anyway, how would marriage be eradicated anyway? Would it happen when I am able to marry my dog, as these buffoons say is the next step after marriage equality? Or maybe my fish or my car or house? Looks like even under the batsh*t crazy scenarios marriage isn’t being eradicated.

I don’t understand why the party of small government pushes for constitutional amendments to prohibit two consenting adults from entering a relationship they choose to define as marriage. A constitutional amendment is very big government.

I support gay marriage, but it’s not a top issue for me, so I had no idea that states had constitutional amendments that had of course had to pass tougher voting requirements. That is extra large government.

Two gay people entering a union that they define as marriage in no way threatens my personal definition of marriage. How is allowing more people to marry “the eradication of marriage altogether?”

I met Rep. Harris once and spoke with him once or twice. I’m not his constituent, but he was wonderful to the few of us who met with him. I hope that through his legislative efforts, he gets the right to marry.

Some people just don’t mind being on the wrong side of history. If you are opposed to any rights for homosexuals you should stay quite. It will make it easier to answer future generations when they ask what it was like back in the day when people fought against homosexual rights. You don’t want your grandchildren to think you are totes cray.

I live a stone’s throw from Iowa, where marriage equality has been around for a few years. In that time, I have not seen rampaging immorality seeping across the Mississippi river. There have been no gay recruitment drives or mass dissolution of marriages in my neighborhood. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not parked in my driveway.

Downside? I haven’t seen it, except for having to buy some wedding gifts for friends who finally got to have a wedding ceremony after twenty-plus years of committed relationships with their partners.

==I have never understood why governments–at any level–concern themselves with marriage between consenting adults.==

The interest (and justification for a tax break) is that the committed & binding relationship relieves the government of certain burdens. If only one of the two works, the other is less likely need or ask for government support. The spouse can also make medical decisions, be held responsible for debts, act as the executor of an estate, and many other responsibilities. The government thus has an interest in certifying and recording the partnership and, if necessary, overseeing the dissolution.

I am worried about the whole dog marriage thing. My husband really loves our dog. If they make gay dog marriage illegal, I could lose them both. Oh help me, help me Mr. Smith. You’re the only thing standing between me and a broken home — which oddly, means something very different from housebroken, getting back to the dog thing.

Someone once told me that if gay marriage is allowed, what’s next, people marrying dogs and other animals? I told a friend about this, and he said something that was so funny and true, and it just blew that ridiculous argument out of the water. He said, can animals sign consent forms?

I think we should abolish government sanctioned marriage altogether, and replace it with civil unions. Then people and organizations could determine what marriage means to them. The Catholic Church could marry people based on their belief, and a local dungeons and dragons club could do the same if they chose to. So, yes, I do support eradicating marriage from our statute, but realizing I am in the minority and I am happy to support Rep. Harris.

Contractual relationships are items for lawyers and courts and marriage should be handled just like any other contractual relationship.

==The spouse can also make medical decisions, be held responsible for debts, act as the executor of an estate, and many other responsibilities.==

Again, these are contractual obligations, not governmental obligations. While the courts may be needed to ensure the marriage contract is enforced, I can make the same arrangements with my father or sister or a stranger. Again, the government has no compelling interest.

@Fan of the game: contractual relationships are simply not the same as marriage rights. Consider what happens when your spouse/partner is taken to an emergency room. Now consider the different reactions — and legal liabilities and obligations on the part of hospital staffs — when you say, ” My wife/husband was just brought here” versus “my contractuallly bound life partner was just brought here”?

Marriage provides a shorthand for a host of legal, social, and cultural norms. And the state does have an interest in regulating those norms; it does not have a compelling interest (IMO) in excluding gay people from those norms.

=== marriage is a contractual relationship. Not that IL really cares about contracts, but I think we can agree the government has a necessary role in enforcing contracts. ===

Yes, but government’s role in marriage currently goes well beyond enforcement of a contract. One need permission from the government before one can get married. In most (or all) other contractual agreements, you do not need permission from the government before entering into the contract.

I think the motivation on the anti-equality side has little to do with any specific beliefs about the quality of their own marriages, nor society’s “moral fabric”. Certainly those are some of the rationalizations they offer, and I have little doubt many of them believe it.

But in reality, this is about power, privilege and social deference slipping through the fingers of religious and social conservatives. Marriage is just a proxy for the broader cultural shift. They defend the traditional concept of marriage not just because it reflects their ideal, but because it implies a specific government endorsement of their ideal. To lose that is to disturb the denial they’ve been living in since the ’60s, the same denial fueling the careers of the David Bartons of the world.

==Yes, but government’s role in marriage currently goes well beyond enforcement of a contract. One need permission from the government before one can get married.==

@Just Observing–I understand that. My point is that the government shouldn’t have that authority over who marries whom. Government’s only compelling interest is in the benefits it has chosen to give to married couples. IMO, married people should have no more benefits than single people.

@The Other Anonymous–I would still say, “My wife was brought here.” I would still be married; I just wouldn’t need a government sanction to be married. The government does NOT have an interest in social or cultural norms. It has an interest in protecting the rights of the individual, and in determining who can marry whom and providing benefits to the “approved” class of people, it thwarts those rights.

I hope that David E. Smith is ready to announce his public support for outlawing divorce and (once again) criminalizing adultery.

No, no, I don’t really want to see that happen. But if Smith and his allies really were out to save marriages, they would be taking on the things that actually cause many heterosexual marriages to dissolve, instead of trying to push back against same-sex couples who love each other and…oh horror of horrors!…want to MARRY.

hmmm…well, you see…if the Gays get the right to marry, the Straight people won’t get married anymore. Why? Because, if the gays can get married, then being straight married loses all its exclusive priviledges. Plus, the straight folk will decide to not marry or to divorce in order to protest the gay marrying. Or, all straight people will just turn gay and marry members of their own sex. Anyway, once all the straight marriages are gone, the gays will no longer want to be married, so marriage will go away. Or, once the gays get married, then they’ll decide that marriage should be allowed to cast a wider net than just two people. So, the gays will push for polygamy to be legalized. But then, everyone will just decide to descend into a pit of wanton polyamory and just skip getting married altogether. So, marriage is destroyed.

Or something. These people from the IFI seem to have severe psychological issues. They all need to spend a great deal of time in therapy.

Given that marriage has always been a natural institution recognizing a comprehensive conjugal union whose public purpose is to proactively protect children’s right to a relationship with both of the people who brought them into being, and revisionists want it to become a state-recognized union of any two persons for the purposes of conferring government subsidies, one can kind of see Mr. Smith’s point.